EMC is providing skads of storage to Formula One wannabee winner Lotus for a chance at Grands Prix glory.
F1 regulations are going to change in 2014, mandating hybrid, turbo-charged V6 engines instead of the current normally aspirated V8s. So Lotus decided it need a wholesale storage refresh to help with the changeover.
The …

F1 & IT...A fun project...?

Re: F1 & IT...A fun project...?

A number of years ago I did a summer as an Electronic Design Engineer for a subsidiary of one of the teams (who were supplying the whole grid, hint hint). It was a bit of a bizarre world to work in - there was very much a blue collar/white collar divide although it was cordial. For instance even as a 1st year engineering summer intern I pretty much had two electronic techs at my disposal to do my bidding.

The whole company got together for morning coffee and afternoon tea which broke down not only the colar divide but also the divide between different companies under the same roof. The overriding impression I got from my colleagues was that it was an environment which there was a lot of pressure to achieve results but everyone did, and moreover they were happy doing so.

Obviously being a summer intern is very different from being a full time employee but yes I did feel the stress but it felt like it was stress that was acceptable and managed.

Ongoing SAP @ another F1 team.

= Nightmare.

Not so much stressful as "lacked direction" and "corporate buy-in" from all departments (including IT). Still, that's to be expected when you have no real business case and you are only implementing to keep the sponsors marketing department happy.

All the flash cars, supposed kudos, sparkly aluminium and (what somebody thought was) "high art installations" soon pale when you realise that professionally you are on a hiding to nothing.

Logo

20 years ago, spent a few months writing trackside Windows software. Never saw a real F1 car (no suprise) - never even saw real F1 data. Much too secret. The telemetry dataset we had to play with was a) old b) from F3 or something.

In a previous job, one of the girls in my team was married to one of McLarens fuel men. He was responsible for the fuel rigs (in the days of refueling), making sure that the fuel was always at the right temp, and that the FIA got their fuel samples when requested. He always said he loved the job which was 3 days of massive stress during the race weekend, the rest of the time was pretty much paperwork. He seemed to spend more time travelng than actually working.

Lotus in name only

This isn't actually Lotus the car maker. This F1 team just has rights to the Lotus name since the real Lotus car maker departed F1 years ago.

As far as Lotus using the cloud...Lotus is under budgeted and always a few weeks away from bankruptcy IMO so they might not even make it through the current F1 season, even though they have been pretty competitive with Kimi the past two seasons.

Re: Lotus in name only

'2014 Car'

The picture is a cropped rear of the current car rather than a 2014 chassis.

The weird crop is required because it's now general knowledge that the 2014 nose / front wing will look very different but fewer people know what a 2014 rear would look like (the regs are not yet public domain) so they can just pass the rear off as next year's car.